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Building by housing associations may be about to falter
As Inside Housing publishes its Biggest Builders Survey 2020, COVID-19, fire safety and the green agenda are just some of the things housing associations are having to grapple with as they plan for the future, writes Jess McCabe
Coronavirus has changed the world in ways we couldn’t have comprehended. Amid all of the change, we have yet to really understand what it will do for one small, but significant, part of the world: housing association building plans.
Yes, we know that construction sites were closed during lockdown. Most are reopening or have already restarted operations. However, we are beginning to see that social distancing and materials availability will slow delivery.
What we don’t know is what will happen in the long term. This week we publish our league table of the UK housing associations building the most homes, our annual list of the Biggest Builders. The top 50 have built more than 40,000 homes – if it wasn’t for the shadow of coronavirus, this would be a banner year.
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Lockdown started just weeks before the end of the financial year, delaying some homes. That is not particularly worrying – ultimately, it is a few hundred homes being delivered late. More unsettling is the fact that many of the biggest associations were not able to provide any estimates for what will be built this year, in two years or in five years. The figures suggest that the overall five-year pipeline may have shrunk by as much as 50,000 homes.
Talking to development directors in the past week, there is a real sense of uncertainty. COVID-19 is just one more shock on a list of others. Fire safety is on the top of that list. As one development chief told me, paying for fire safety work comes straight off the development budget.
Associations are also starting to grapple with what decarbonisation will do to their balance sheets. Earlier this year, Raven Housing Trust shared its finding that energy efficiency work on its existing stock will cost about £20,000 a home. Multiply that across the sector and you’ll see the extent of the problem.
Housing associations signed up to an ethos of ‘build, build, build’ well before Boris Johnson started using the catchphrase. To this end, associations have set ever-increasing and ambitious targets. The ability to increase development has been the clincher for many mergers that have been reshaping the sector.
The next question organisations face is whether this future vision of the sector as a major contributor to housebuilding will survive the pandemic. If it doesn’t, those who will lose out are the many in housing need, including homeless people and those living in insecure, overcrowded and unsafe homes.
The likelihood is that development will shrink at exactly the time when the number of people in need of decent housing rises.
Jess McCabe, deputy editor (features), Inside Housing
